As a kid, I had extreme social anxiety. I had a hard time talking to people and making friends. I never felt like I “belonged.”
As an adult, I still have crippling social anxiety.
I can’t speak for everywhere, I’m pretty much only in the U.S., but I’ve noticed that most fellow adults I come across are chronically deprived of social interaction.
My social anxiety doesn’t actually matter. Me being awkward, and weird, and a little bit out there doesn’t actually matter. If you talk to people, ask them questions about themselves, laugh with them when they want to laugh, listen to them when they want to vent, rant with them when they want to rant, and feel pain with them when they’re vulnerable, a sweeping majority of the people I’ve met in the U.S. engage.
And the more you do it, the more you realize the world is actually full of amazing people. They’re all living their lives, making mistakes, getting things wrong, and making bad calls. But overwhelmingly they’re trying to figure life out and get through the best they can; and they want people with them on that journey.
I still have crippling social anxiety but my friend group is steadily growing and it feels good. I still play the fun game in my head of “haha did we all have a good time today or did I actually say something terrible and now everyone hates me or thinks I’m a fool?” on pretty much a daily basis. But I wouldn’t go back to being lonely. Not just for me, but for these amazing people who want more folks with them on their journey.
What I learned is that it makes a huge difference to get a haircut from someone professional. Going to some cheap random mall hair place is a terrible experience. They don't care about their work, it's going to be awkward and it'll look terrible.
I have been going to a fancy hair place in recent years. AUD $85 seems like a lot of money for a mens haircut, but it makes all the difference. It's a proper craft. No "what haircut would you like?", instead it's pretty much at her discretion and suited to the actual person. Zero regrets.
I used to have trouble going to get my hair cut after a barber clipped my ear with a blade.
Whenever I go to a new city what I do is, I read up a ton of reviews from multiple sources and find a few barbers I think ill like. Then I go for a quick trim to understand how comfortable I feel around them (this is the hardest part, I usually explain to them about my anxiety before I make a booking except for one instance everyone is really understanding usually), I have been lucky enough to find someone good after trying 2-3 barbers.
My current barber is an awesome older gentleman from Iran who migrated to the same city as I am, knows my exact haircut I want, so all I have to do is show up on time and get a great stress free haircut, and get to hear some really interesting story from him. lol if I go out of the city for a while, I wont mind looking like an escaped lunatic for a few days extra until I come back home.
It helps to get the same person too. It is unnerving having a different person each time cutting your hair, I'd rather have someone who's "done me before" than play with dice over it. A bad haircut is a nightmare
Just keep doing what you're doing. Like with everything, expose yourself to your fear and it'll get better.
> I still play the fun game in my head of “haha did we all have a good time today or did I actually say something terrible and now everyone hates me or thinks I’m a fool?”
Appearing as a fool, saying controversial things, getting rejected over and over again - that is how you get over social anxiety.
- Someone who had a great deal of social anxiety and now has no problem at all meeting random strangers at random events.
Exposing yourself to fear doesn’t work for everyone (though good to hear it worked for you!)
For some it activates the parasympathetic nervous system too much and you won’t have much luck easing the anxiety. Other means are available, often therapy or learning ways to cope with Parasympathetic activation. Usually focussed on calming the nervous system through various methods.
One way around social anxiety: think about how little you care about the person in front of you. If you heard that they died how long would you be thinking about it? That’s how much they care about what you do. Or don’t do.
You're assuming that anxiety can be mitigated by just logically convincing oneself that there's no need to be anxious. This might be the case for some people, but for many of us it's a fundamentally irrational condition; the issue isn't that I think something bad will happen if I talk to someone and make a mistake, it's that sometimes having to talk to someone _is_ the bad thing I don't want to happen. You've probably met people who are afraid of spiders, or snakes, or something of that nature, even the ones that don't pose a threat, and the issue is similar here;
I'm not usually one for drugs, but the thing that helped me get out of extreme social anxiety (I had selective mutism into my 20s), was anti-anxiety meds (off-label Modafinil). I didn't take it for long, but being able to be in a social situation without that feeling of dread and anxiety was actually mind blowing.
It helped me recognize a state of mind where I didn't immediately go to massive anxiety. After that, with therapy and forcing myself to do more social interactions, I got into a much better place. I still have some anxiety, but it's largely manageable - and most people think I'm quite social now.
It's something you might want to consider talking to a doctor about. I don't think anyone should have to suffer from social anxiety if there is some option to help them get out of it.
One thing that helps is to consider how much you've gained by trying and failing to socialise versus not trying at all. My failures to fit in were far less impactful than my failures to try. So I try more.
I know that you can't rationalise your way out of irrational fears, but the thought still helps.
I found that listening is a lot easier than talking. Just plain listening and paying full attention to the person - that is, making eye contact, acknowledging when they say something, asking stuff based on what they are saying etc.
- "modern" also ~optimize for social fluidity, you can do everything alone, in your flat, no need to be bothered by others right ? until you end up sad and addicted to fill the void (capitalism/consumerism makes money on this.. people need money so it's a downlevelling cycle)
- long ago, when i was crippled socially, i ended up at a birthday party, i didn't speak 95% of the time, drank some whiskey to pass the time. the next morning i was happier and healthier than i've been for a long time. somehow being surrounded, seeing others, even afar, satisfies something in your brain
people are weird, i am weird, it's .. weird we don't connect that much, or maybe our lifestyles cut us from a natural emerging habit of being together and we forgot how to bootstrap it back
Mr. Rogers was my actual neighbor in Pittsburgh in 1999-2000, while I was at CMU. He would really go out of his way to have social interactions. He would always say hello and ask how you were doing in a way that felt like he actually genuinely wanted to know the answer. Case of the person in real life being exactly like what he seems like on TV.
Me too! I lived in Squirrel Hill and would see him doing things like going into the stationary store with one of his grandchildren to buy a card. Seeing him around was always magical.
This is one thing that always got me about the United States: people will ask you how you are doing, but they don't actually mean it, it's just a required pre-amble, a bit like the tones a modem uses to sync up with the other end.
If he did it in a way that he actually genuinely wanted to know the answer that alone would set him apart in a very distinctive way. Most people really don't want to know the answer, but they'll still ask the question.
As an American, I view it as an option to start a light conversation. You can decline the option with a simple "Good, thanks", or you can genuinely answer with a light comment and see if the other person reciprocates. Answering with a particularly serious topic will likely catch the other person off guard, so people avoid that, but to say Americans don't actually mean it when they ask how are you misses some of the nuance of the situation.
There are important contextual and regional difference that apply too. You're more likely to get a genuine reply in a place like the rural Midwest than you are in NYC. You also are more likely to get a genuine reply from a person relaxing at a bar than the cashier at a fast food drive through window. There are many people who will take the question as an invitation to talk if the situation is right.
In linguistics these are called "phatic expressions", and are far from unique to American English. Similar to idioms, phatic expressions don't have the literal meaning implied by their component words and instead serve a social purpose (in this case, serving to signify the beginning of a communication protocol). In British English the analogous phrase would be "you alright?"
Speaking for myself, the question is always fairly routine but sometimes people answer genuinely. In almost all those cases I really do care, but the register of the conversation usually only shifts after it’s apparent that the person is looking for more than a routine conversation
I think it's less that people don't actually want to know than it is that people don't actually want to share. But I'm from the Midwest, originally, and that's just kind of how we are.
Expanding on this just a little bit... I think that, in the Midwest but I'm sure in many other distinct American cultural regions, there's a sort of shared, but subdued, understanding that each of us is uniquely going through some shit. We answer the way we do because we don't want to trouble others with said shit.
That reminds me of Tig Notaro's incredible stand-up set when she found out she had cancer:
"I have cancer, how are you?" "Is everyone having a good time? I have cancer."
It's a masterpiece, in my opinion. Tig finds an intensely awkward situation with an audience that showed up for comedy, and just presses on it relentlessly. I really hope that when it's my turn, I can handle it like her.
Do you shake hands? No one in my life shakes hands anymore. "Hi, how are you," is no more rational, but at least it's more hygienic. As polite social conventions go, I'd call it pretty harmless. Sort of miss the handshakes though.
Edit: FWIW, I often ask people how they are, and while I hope and am delighted to hear how people are, you're right, objectively, I think it's really more just sort of a default template that invites any kind of response vaguely correlating with one's status. But, "Hi, I invite you to tell me anything on your mind that might correlate with how you or the world are, or anything else; I'm just being social," is a bit clumsy.
>people will ask you how you are doing, but they don't actually mean it,
it is common to hear a reply as "oh, you know" an an equally un-engaged response. i remember the first time an uncle responed "well, no, I don't. that's why I asked." i had never realized how i had become desensitized to the question that i gave an equally meaningless response. so now, if it's a stranger, it's just a simple "doing good" or "just fine" followed by a "thanks". if it's someone i am familiar with like family or friend, but not coworkers, then i might stop to provide a more truthful response
FWIW, I'm American but well-traveled/encultured, and I work a lot with people in other parts of the world. I ask this question, and I use it as an opportunity for the other person to set the tone of the conversation. I actually find it pretty refreshing when I get a blunt and meaningful answer in response, it's one reason I love working with Dutch and German engineers, because they will give a real answer and not be so concerned as to how it may be perceived.
I think it's exactly a bit like a modem preamble, but it's an opportunity to create a conversation and give both people in the conversation a chance to set the tone. It can really be used to genuinely find out the answer to the question, but a lot of people don't want to share their personal challenges with strangers, coworkers, or even acquaintances. You may not enough know exactly what level of intimacy is included in your relationship with another person or whether you are at the point to move to that next level, this simple question gives them the opportunity to either dive into something that's very personal or to keep it light-hearted and move along.
It's not a throwaway, it's a respectful way to start a conversation that gives the other person agency in setting the tone.
It’s really person dependent. I really mean it, and a lot of folks do. Additionally if you said “not good,” most people will be caught off guard but pivot into sympathy and asking what’s wrong etc. It’s a perfectly acceptable answer. A key thing though is to make sure it’s appropriate to the moment. If my boss asks me how I’m doing I’ll tell them if it’s not good in some way related to work or my performance (I.e., “not good, I can’t get this to compile” or “not good, my mom died I need to take time off,” or even, “not good, I didn’t sleep well last night.”) for friends the “not good” can be deeper, and for family it’s pretty open. For strangers, I still might say “not good” if something particularly acute is happening (“not good, my mom just died,” “not good, I just got out of the hospital this morning.”) I’ve never had someone get uppity about a “not good” response, and have always had an appropriate pivot to sympathy and a refocus on the question.
As such, I’ve always found it odd people narrow in on the “how are you” question being perfunctory and people don’t genuinely care. They routinely ask it and generally expect “good thanks” but react appropriately to other answers.
Isn't it just how speech works? There are examples of this probably in any culture. It would actually be odd to respond to the question as asked instead of the expected ACK; you'd get something like this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhEYXcCB1Qw
The first time I experienced it, I was dumbfounded when someone asked "How are you?" and then just kept walking past. It took me a while to accept certain questions like this have become greetings and often aren't actually intended as questions.
I mean it's not generally accepted to say "I'm dying of cancer, you?" but it's a good jumping point for lighter conversation, which is healthier than not having the interaction at all.
> This is one thing that always got me about the United States: people will ask you how you are doing, but they don't actually mean it
Yes, we use it like "hello" -- but not always. Sometimes we mean it.
Since this use of "How are you?" trips up people from other nations so much, I've tried to be more aware of this. My compromise is that when I mean it as a greeting rather than a query, I'll say "Howzitgoing" like a single word. If I mean it as a query, I'll look the person in the eye and ask "How are you doing?"
The entire world probably has the equivalent of "how are you" in every which language available. Not sure where you're going with this "take" on American culture.
Fun fact: I recently learned that in Fiji they ask "where are you going?" instead of "how are you doing?". They have a "how are you doing" greeting as well, but passing someone in the street you would say "where are you going?" to which there can be both generic and specific responses. I'm not sure if they're any more or less interested in the response but I just found it interesting.
The problem is in the United States, most people don’t really know how they are doing.
I don’t know how I’m doing right now. If you asked me you wouldn’t get much of an answer. I might say I’m doing just fine to end the conversation.
But what is there to really say? We are simply going about this world trying to survive, trying to not get shot, trying to make so much money so that we never befall the fate of those who have been damned to a life of poverty. And all the time, a war wages for the control of our minds, and our privacy and free agency threatened at every opportunity. Big corporations and lobbyists want to hold us down, keep us in offices toiling away so princely investors can prop up their commercial real estate empires and ensure the working rich never get a chance to break free of their chains and embrace their own financial independence, because that would mean they become uncontrollable, a threat to those in power whose primary tool of coercion is money. The climate is falling apart and it makes little sense to have even one child, assuming you could even find a partner unsullied by the toxic dating culture that has been brewed by impossible standards hoisted upon us by social medias. I had to step over two homeless bums overdosing on the sidewalk this morning, victims of a drug epidemic that goes quietly unnoticed, swept under the rug as an inconvenient truth. It is clear the best days of this nation are far behind it. The future is perilously dark and uncertain.
How am I really doing? Don’t know. I don’t try to think about it.
I treat "how are you" as an opening for a quick update if there's something to say (e.g. "it was Billie's first day of school today"), or a chance to set up a deeper discussion later (e.g. "oh man, long story, let's catch up later").
We live in a mid sized city in the midwest, typical city block with single family homes. Folks keep to themselves a bit - not everyone, but enough that you have to make an effort to connect with neighbors.
My son and I had the idea that we should just organize a block party. I think this was in early 2021 after covid was letting up a bit. He was 7 years old and said we should get a food truck to come.
So that's what we did. Made homemade invitations and handed them out to a couple blocks around us and sent out emails to friends.
I think we had like 75 people show up to the first one! It was great. Had a taco truck come, and the local fire station rolled the engine by for the kids.
Blocked off the street so everyone could sit together and the kids could run around without worrying about traffic.
We've been trying to do this every 6 months or so since then. Great way to meet tons of folks in the immediate vicinity and strike up some new friendships - highly recommend it.
Let's not forget to praise the adult here for seeing possibilities, instead of impossibilities, either! Plenty of parents would find plenty of reasons why such a thing would be impossible.
I live on a block that’s somewhat bookended by a railway line in London. People organise similar things and it’s so lovely. Even organised a group of people to go and sing happy birthday on one of our neighbour’s doorsteps (they’re > 100).
In our last house we knew 90% of the people on our street and regularly interacted with them. We have been in our new house for just over 2 years and only know our neighbors on one side of our house. The neighbor in the other house moved in just a week after we did. In those 2 years we have seen him only once, they day he moved in when he pulled up in his car, got out (without looking our way), opened the garage door, drove in, and closed the door. We literally have not seen him a single time since. The only way we know anyone still lives there is the garbage cans going out and coming back in each week (though, nobody has ever seen him putting out or retrieving his cans). Anyway, it’s hard to get to know a neighbor who doesn’t seem to exist.
In our previous house, we lived about halfway down a dead end street, so anyone from one end walking by would come past our house. Also, there was a neighborhood garden which brought people together. In our new house, there is no community gathering space and we leave in a culdesac at the end of a road. The result is we don’t get to know our neighbors.
I'm a fairly introverted, reclusive person. Much like your one neighbour. I keep to myself.
I do know my neighbours. The couple on one side is delightful and the woman on the other side is a "Karen" who I prefer not associate with. She is an outdoor person and only "talks" to me when she has a problem with how I keep my yard. Ironically I would probably use my yard more (and thus tend to it more) if she were not always outside in her yard being loud.
We have alley parking and garages in the rear, and I have workshop in my garage so I met a lot of my neighbours on the other side of the alley when working on projects... they came and introduced themselves and asked me what I was working on. They are delightful, but they also interrupted me which is annoying.
My wife and I are easy to get along with and go out of our way to be friendly, but would honestly rather not know that our neighbours exist. Car doors, the sound of people talking, dogs barking, kids being loud, lack of privacy in our back yard are all things that really bother us. On the flip-side, when the tree in our front yard shed a branch so large that it was practically a small tree, the delightful couple next door helped us clean it up. I felt a sense of community that day and I started to get what others find enjoyable about it. Still, we often talk of going "going rural" and not having neighbours at all.
It’s funny, I’ve always known my neighbors and talk to everyone on the block, but then I realized that most of them don’t talk to each other. Strange way to live because we are increasingly living in a world where you’re going to need help sooner or later and who else can you seek help from in emergencies other than your neighbors?
We had a mom who had recently moved in, screaming in hysterics on the block one day because she thought her toddler ran away when she stepped out for a moment to throw out trash. My neighbor (who also talks to everyone) and I came out, and along with the mailman and a couple of construction guys around the corner, immediately did a search on the neighborhood blocks. She eventually found him hiding in the house, and was relieved, but then just walked away without so much as a thank you to anyone. Such a strange way to live.
In the novel I’m currently reading, Popco (which I think the HN crowd would totally dig), there’s a section where there’s a seminar in network theory talking about the reason things like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, or any network of connected nodes, manage to have connections with so few hops is because there end up being superconnectors which are connected to a large number of other nodes. I realized I had that role in my circle of friends in my 20s after I moved away and then came back for a visit a few months later and discovered that few of them had seen each other in the intervening months. You likely play that role on your block. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.
I also have an experience where the design of the neighborhood heavily affects interaction with my neighbours. I live in a street whose entrance is too narrow for cars. Except for the occasional motorcycle, the soundscape makes it possible to chat every time I exit my house and there’s no barrier between the houses affecting visibility. Hanging out in front of the house is enjoyable because the backyards are tiny. We have a great relationship with all our neighbours and they form a sort of extended family. In the beginning, one thing that surprised me was the social dynamics reminding me of school, but it still beats anonymity. There are great demonstrations of support with the elders, the parents, or the alcoholics of the street when they can’t open their door at night. We are quite different from each other but physical proximity overcomes it.
Yeah I had a similar experience at my last place. I actually attribute it at least in part to what kind of weather your area has. My last house was in a very temperate place, and I and my neighbors were very often outside where spontaneous conversation could manifest.
I’m currently in Phoenix, AZ, and given regular temperatures over 105* F, there just typically aren’t many people out and about, save for a few hours in the morning. And that’s usually before sun up.
I have noticed a general decline in my spirits not shooting the breeze with my neighbors from time to time.
I'm one of those neighbors who doesn't seem to exist. I don't dislike my neighbors and would like to interact with them more often, unfortunately I don't often have time for it.
Did you go over and knock on his door and offer him a tray of brownies or a potted plant or something? I just moved, and that's exactly what happened with us. Nonzero chance we'll be looking after our other neighbors' amazing Bernese within the next 6 months.
One thing my wife and I noticed during COVID (I live in suburban NJ):
6pm-6:30pm seems to be a prime time for people in general and families specifically to go for a walk. If you are outside with kids playing on the front lawn, this leads to a lot of organic conversation since no one is in a rush.
If you happen to be preparing and eating dinner inside during this time (like we used to), you can miss out on a lot of opportunities to get to know your neighbors (assuming they are friendly).
Did you move into an affluent & predominantly white neighborhood? I will probably get shit for this, but this has been the norm in those from my experience.
After I got into tech I lived in a couple of them for five years then just gave up and moved back to the underdeveloped part of the city I grew up in, where people are willing to acknowledge each other.
here’s your counter-point. now the sample size is two.
lived in a diverse, affluent, tech/corpo neighborhood, most neighbors ignored or were passive aggressive - the kind where you know you aren’t being ignored because the behavior is too egregious to not be aware of the impact. you aren’t being ignored, you aren’t worth ignoring.
lived in an older, affluent neighborhood. four neighbors that would likely be described as caucasian regardless of their names or backgrounds were nothing but kind, offering to help the first time we interacted.
lived in an older, rural, poor neighborhood. most folks would stop and talk if you were outside, see how stuff is going. place was shit. some of the folks were gold.
the issue isn’t the skin color, the wallet fullness, the religion, or the race. you can look any which way and be an asshole on the inside. you can have a lot or a lot of nothing, and be an asshole.
affluence just let’s the asshole shine through a bit more. after all, the asshole deserves a lot, and the money is proof.
larger cities develop these little bubbles of halfluence - starter mcmansions for the white collar “elite,” close to their cubicle farms or at least a fat internet pipe and a starbucks within uber. the environment is shit - these aren’t actually elites - so the individuals tend to act up in their burbclaves.
established vs gentrified might be a better distinction. established doesn’t always mean affluent, but it does have a different sort of wealth.
Not the person you responded to, but I'll bite. I live in an affluent nearly all-white suburban neighborhood. I know everyone within two houses in any direction, and a few that are even farther than that. We have one recluse and one Karen, but everyone else is super laid back. It's delightful.
I've lived in a range of neighborhoods over my life, and I haven't really seen a pattern. My gut instinct is that attitude is contagious, and friendly neighborhoods have (or had) someone who spreads the love. People reflect the way they are treated.
I'm not sure race or affluence has anything to do with it so much as how the place you're living is designed. There needs to be a reason for people to walk - like going to some shops, the train, nice parks, etc. When you have that then people see each other often and recognize each other and say hi and stop and chat for a few minutes. And some of those relationships grow as you find out you have certain shared interests (kids, hobbies, etc) and someone gets the courage to invite the others over for a BBQ with some others and it's nice. And it becomes contagious as people begin to blend and the next thing you know the entire block you live on, most everyone knows most everyone else.
But if you live in a place where there's nothing walkable and walking isn't even encouraged (no sidewalks, etc) then people don't really leave their back yards. Everyone is isolated. And to be sure this is what a good deal of people want. But if you want community and getting to know each other then you need to live in a place that encourages walking around.
I live in a predominantly white extremely rich neighborhood in Portland. We even have a private club that costs thousands to belong to ( one of these fancy social clubs... We do not belong to it).
Anyway... No this is not the norm. My neighborhood is extremely social and has constant get togethers.
I agree with the comments on 'half fluence'. I have some friends who've moved in to newer developments. Those neighborhoods are much less social. Ours is more established.
My street was full of older folks that we got to know over the years. Some moved to assisted living, some are getting there, and some passed away from unexpected diagnoses.
We have new Gen Z neighbours for the last two years who seem to exist in their bubble, shutting out the immediate world and interacting only with their social circle. Barely an acknowledgement even if we’re out in the yard, shovelling snow or cutting grass.
I don’t expect much, but maybe small talk once every couple of months to get a sense they’re alright, and not gone off the deep end and bottling their urine in mason jars.
At some point, you start to fill in the blanks by noticing little things like what’s on TV through the window (hockey 24/7) when you drive by, who does the yard work (she does) or the decorations they put up on the outside.
I am wondering if this is some generational divide at play where some slice of the population had been conditioned that the only valid interactions are those that happen online.
It’s also possible that we seem intimidating or unsocial — but our interactions with other neighbours don’t seem to give this vibe.
I wonder about this, and not in the sense that this person is being extra cautious still. In my case, I moved into my house a few months before the pandemic struck. When I moved in, the couple across the street came by to introduce themselves when I was moving in. We had a short friendly chat and exchanged numbers.
Once the pandemic hit, everyone sort of disappeared, and I hadn't even talked to the neighbors on one side of the house. During that period, I got more introverted and sort of started avoiding social interactions with people, and not because of a fear of catching COVID. I just became more withdrawn since I wasn't socializing in general.
Anyway, after it got safer and more people were getting out, I now felt awkward seeing the people who introduced themselves on that first day since so much time has elapsed without conversation. (That's on me and my social anxiety, though.) I think it'll require me getting over my introversion to chat with them now.
On the other hand, I have been over to a neighbor on one side of my house a couple of times, but that was them going out of their way to include me.
I think what I'm saying is the pandemic created this weird empty period where people who had just moved in to neighborhoods didn't necessarily build connections with their neighbors and now it'll take some effort to bridge those gaps. On top of that, I think there was some social practice that many of us were out of, which made it even more difficult to just chat up strangers, but I feel like for me this is finally starting to go away.
"In our new house, there is no community gathering space and we leave in a culdesac at the end of a road. The result is we don’t get to know our neighbors. "
Most of the year, I live in a midwestern suburb: 1/3rd of an acre lots as far as the eye can see. I go on a walk every day, but it's rare that I ever actually see a human being during said walk: Everyone is cooped up in their houses. In practice, in most of this suburban life, every bit of human interaction is planned. We drive to commerce, and there we are met by workers with constantly changing schedules, who have minimal connection to the businesses they work in. It's not impossible to make connections in this environment, but it takes actual effort. This makes work the main form of social interaction for many people around me.
Over the summer, however, I spend time in Spain. A town with a population under 200k, and yet far more dense than San Francisco. Streets are narrower, and most errands are less than 10 minutes away, on foot. The pharmacist, the baker, the workers at the restaurant, don't change very much. Since everyone walks, you really get to pass by every neighbor in the building every couple of weeks. The parks and playing ares with children are never close to empty, and people tend to have routines, so it's far easier to get to know people from random interactions. It's not uncommon to meet people you know, completely by accident, just because you walk the same streets. I might not stop at a certain coffee shop, but it has seating outside, and friends are be sitting there, and therefore I get a chance social encounter, even when I am not visiting the same business. There's benches in random streets, and people meet there, and chat on the street, so you don't even need a business as a "third place", when you have the street. Thus, getting six non-work social interactions a day becomes trivial.
Large parts of America have chosen forms of development that are naturally isolating: It's no surprise so many feel isolated!
Yes, that's exactly right. A town needs to be designed in a way that encourages walking. Shops to walk to, trains for commuting, a certain density, etc. Walking create so many opportunities to see people regularly without planning and to become comfortable with each other and it grows from there. Multiply that by everyone else doing it and you do get a real sense of community.
> Large parts of America have chosen forms of development that are naturally isolating: It's no surprise so many feel isolated!
Indeed - I have relatives that live in a place like this. Nice homes, etc but few trees, no sidewalks, and nowhere to walk. Why would you other than exercise? And a lot of people like it this way and that's fine. They want privacy and aren't interested in building relationships with people they live near. That's fine.
But if you want a sense of community then you need to live in a place that encourages walking by making it useful.
I grew up in the suburbs, and it was a noteworthy occurrence when someone saw someone they knew out and about at the store or something like that.
Now I live in the city and with so many more people around I see people I know so much more often. It really makes you understand how isolating the suburbs can become.
> As part of the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index, saying hello to more than 1 neighbor was shown to correlate with greater self-perception of well-being.
So this wasn't a study. As far as I can tell, the results can just as easily be summarized as "people who report higher well-being are more likely to greet neighbours."
This is probably just the article to blame, the quotes they pick use words like "correlation."
I find the five vs. six distinction rather interesting though. What's up with that?
> Averaged across five dimensions that included career, communal, physical, financial, and social well-being, the increase which greeting a neighbor had led to around a 2-point increase on a scale of 0-100 up until the sixth neighbor, at which point further greetings had no measured impact.
> I find the five vs. six distinction rather interesting though. What's up with that?
There's no reasonable mechanism in which greeting people causes well-being. So asking why it caps out at 6 makes no sense, unless you implicitly want to call out their bullshit. It's just another vague correlation in a overinterpreted study of noisy data.
We got a small, older dog a couple years ago, mostly for my wife. She has health issues and can't walk the dog, so it fell on me. At first I was kind of resentful. The dog is ponderous and doesn't really take direction much, and I'm way too short on free time.
Well, I've lived in the neighborhood for ten years and only when I started walking the dog did I start meeting a bunch of people in the neighborhood. I still would like an extra 30 minutes of free time a day, but my life is a lot richer socially.
I was a dog park regular at a few parks over course of a few years, as were several others so I met and befriended a lot of people but never knew any names other than dog names. Although I recall exchanging and promptly forgetting a few peoples names
Walking the dog is sort of the meat space version of having an article to discuss online. It facilitates having a thing to talk about, to politely bond over without being overly personal, an excuse for the interaction so you don't sound like a creepy stalker for talking to a stranger for no reason.
You're sort of forced into it too. The only thing more awkward than striking up conversation with a stranger is not striking up a conversation while your dogs are busy sniffing eachothers butts.
This was me with my youngest child, who had croup and I ended up walking her around the block quite frequently at night, especially in the colder months. We got to know so many people and so much about what was going on.
Our buildings, cities and economic life (work) are not organized to support social cohesion and the wellbeing that flows from that condition. Actually the main motto is "there is no such thing as society".
Digital online life has been a major opportunity to partially remedy the isolation induced by designs that maximize anything else (real estate value, GDP) than emotional balance.
Somewhat predictably though, the same driving forces created the same alienating mess. People are starved for social interaction and adopted digital tools en-masse, only to be exploited and reduced to data minable products.
There does not seem to be an exit from the trap we are in the short run. Material well-being has been prioritized above everything else and that is not compatible with social well-being.
We are left we somewhat sad "tips and tricks", like greeting six neighbors. Which obviously wont hurt but are so helplessly far from achieving something tangible.
Readit News
As an adult, I still have crippling social anxiety.
I can’t speak for everywhere, I’m pretty much only in the U.S., but I’ve noticed that most fellow adults I come across are chronically deprived of social interaction.
My social anxiety doesn’t actually matter. Me being awkward, and weird, and a little bit out there doesn’t actually matter. If you talk to people, ask them questions about themselves, laugh with them when they want to laugh, listen to them when they want to vent, rant with them when they want to rant, and feel pain with them when they’re vulnerable, a sweeping majority of the people I’ve met in the U.S. engage.
And the more you do it, the more you realize the world is actually full of amazing people. They’re all living their lives, making mistakes, getting things wrong, and making bad calls. But overwhelmingly they’re trying to figure life out and get through the best they can; and they want people with them on that journey.
I still have crippling social anxiety but my friend group is steadily growing and it feels good. I still play the fun game in my head of “haha did we all have a good time today or did I actually say something terrible and now everyone hates me or thinks I’m a fool?” on pretty much a daily basis. But I wouldn’t go back to being lonely. Not just for me, but for these amazing people who want more folks with them on their journey.
In reality, I cut my own hair because it stresses me out to go to a Greatclips.
I have been going to a fancy hair place in recent years. AUD $85 seems like a lot of money for a mens haircut, but it makes all the difference. It's a proper craft. No "what haircut would you like?", instead it's pretty much at her discretion and suited to the actual person. Zero regrets.
Whenever I go to a new city what I do is, I read up a ton of reviews from multiple sources and find a few barbers I think ill like. Then I go for a quick trim to understand how comfortable I feel around them (this is the hardest part, I usually explain to them about my anxiety before I make a booking except for one instance everyone is really understanding usually), I have been lucky enough to find someone good after trying 2-3 barbers.
My current barber is an awesome older gentleman from Iran who migrated to the same city as I am, knows my exact haircut I want, so all I have to do is show up on time and get a great stress free haircut, and get to hear some really interesting story from him. lol if I go out of the city for a while, I wont mind looking like an escaped lunatic for a few days extra until I come back home.
> I still play the fun game in my head of “haha did we all have a good time today or did I actually say something terrible and now everyone hates me or thinks I’m a fool?”
Appearing as a fool, saying controversial things, getting rejected over and over again - that is how you get over social anxiety.
- Someone who had a great deal of social anxiety and now has no problem at all meeting random strangers at random events.
For some it activates the parasympathetic nervous system too much and you won’t have much luck easing the anxiety. Other means are available, often therapy or learning ways to cope with Parasympathetic activation. Usually focussed on calming the nervous system through various methods.
This works well, only thing is sometimes you start having fun with it and then you're always saying the wrong things but not caring.
It helped me recognize a state of mind where I didn't immediately go to massive anxiety. After that, with therapy and forcing myself to do more social interactions, I got into a much better place. I still have some anxiety, but it's largely manageable - and most people think I'm quite social now.
It's something you might want to consider talking to a doctor about. I don't think anyone should have to suffer from social anxiety if there is some option to help them get out of it.
I know that you can't rationalise your way out of irrational fears, but the thought still helps.
I find that easier to do than actually talking
- long ago, when i was crippled socially, i ended up at a birthday party, i didn't speak 95% of the time, drank some whiskey to pass the time. the next morning i was happier and healthier than i've been for a long time. somehow being surrounded, seeing others, even afar, satisfies something in your brain
people are weird, i am weird, it's .. weird we don't connect that much, or maybe our lifestyles cut us from a natural emerging habit of being together and we forgot how to bootstrap it back
https://youtube.com/watch?v=vV-eVYahckA
http://www.neighborhoodarchive.com/misc/candid_camera/index....
The world is much poorer without him.
If he did it in a way that he actually genuinely wanted to know the answer that alone would set him apart in a very distinctive way. Most people really don't want to know the answer, but they'll still ask the question.
There are important contextual and regional difference that apply too. You're more likely to get a genuine reply in a place like the rural Midwest than you are in NYC. You also are more likely to get a genuine reply from a person relaxing at a bar than the cashier at a fast food drive through window. There are many people who will take the question as an invitation to talk if the situation is right.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=eGnH0KAXhCw
Expanding on this just a little bit... I think that, in the Midwest but I'm sure in many other distinct American cultural regions, there's a sort of shared, but subdued, understanding that each of us is uniquely going through some shit. We answer the way we do because we don't want to trouble others with said shit.
"I have cancer, how are you?" "Is everyone having a good time? I have cancer."
It's a masterpiece, in my opinion. Tig finds an intensely awkward situation with an audience that showed up for comedy, and just presses on it relentlessly. I really hope that when it's my turn, I can handle it like her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXk1DSbXsZk
Edit: FWIW, I often ask people how they are, and while I hope and am delighted to hear how people are, you're right, objectively, I think it's really more just sort of a default template that invites any kind of response vaguely correlating with one's status. But, "Hi, I invite you to tell me anything on your mind that might correlate with how you or the world are, or anything else; I'm just being social," is a bit clumsy.
it is common to hear a reply as "oh, you know" an an equally un-engaged response. i remember the first time an uncle responed "well, no, I don't. that's why I asked." i had never realized how i had become desensitized to the question that i gave an equally meaningless response. so now, if it's a stranger, it's just a simple "doing good" or "just fine" followed by a "thanks". if it's someone i am familiar with like family or friend, but not coworkers, then i might stop to provide a more truthful response
I think it's exactly a bit like a modem preamble, but it's an opportunity to create a conversation and give both people in the conversation a chance to set the tone. It can really be used to genuinely find out the answer to the question, but a lot of people don't want to share their personal challenges with strangers, coworkers, or even acquaintances. You may not enough know exactly what level of intimacy is included in your relationship with another person or whether you are at the point to move to that next level, this simple question gives them the opportunity to either dive into something that's very personal or to keep it light-hearted and move along.
It's not a throwaway, it's a respectful way to start a conversation that gives the other person agency in setting the tone.
As such, I’ve always found it odd people narrow in on the “how are you” question being perfunctory and people don’t genuinely care. They routinely ask it and generally expect “good thanks” but react appropriately to other answers.
Yes, we use it like "hello" -- but not always. Sometimes we mean it.
Since this use of "How are you?" trips up people from other nations so much, I've tried to be more aware of this. My compromise is that when I mean it as a greeting rather than a query, I'll say "Howzitgoing" like a single word. If I mean it as a query, I'll look the person in the eye and ask "How are you doing?"
Still, other languages do that too: que tal (Spanish), šta ima (Serbian), wie gehts (German),...
"How's it going?" can be either a throwaway acknowledgment, or it can be a light opener to a longer conversation.
I don’t know how I’m doing right now. If you asked me you wouldn’t get much of an answer. I might say I’m doing just fine to end the conversation.
But what is there to really say? We are simply going about this world trying to survive, trying to not get shot, trying to make so much money so that we never befall the fate of those who have been damned to a life of poverty. And all the time, a war wages for the control of our minds, and our privacy and free agency threatened at every opportunity. Big corporations and lobbyists want to hold us down, keep us in offices toiling away so princely investors can prop up their commercial real estate empires and ensure the working rich never get a chance to break free of their chains and embrace their own financial independence, because that would mean they become uncontrollable, a threat to those in power whose primary tool of coercion is money. The climate is falling apart and it makes little sense to have even one child, assuming you could even find a partner unsullied by the toxic dating culture that has been brewed by impossible standards hoisted upon us by social medias. I had to step over two homeless bums overdosing on the sidewalk this morning, victims of a drug epidemic that goes quietly unnoticed, swept under the rug as an inconvenient truth. It is clear the best days of this nation are far behind it. The future is perilously dark and uncertain.
How am I really doing? Don’t know. I don’t try to think about it.
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- How are you doing? - How are you doing?
- How are you doing? - Well, you know, yesterday..
both are equally socially acceptable
My son and I had the idea that we should just organize a block party. I think this was in early 2021 after covid was letting up a bit. He was 7 years old and said we should get a food truck to come.
So that's what we did. Made homemade invitations and handed them out to a couple blocks around us and sent out emails to friends.
I think we had like 75 people show up to the first one! It was great. Had a taco truck come, and the local fire station rolled the engine by for the kids.
Blocked off the street so everyone could sit together and the kids could run around without worrying about traffic.
We've been trying to do this every 6 months or so since then. Great way to meet tons of folks in the immediate vicinity and strike up some new friendships - highly recommend it.
In our previous house, we lived about halfway down a dead end street, so anyone from one end walking by would come past our house. Also, there was a neighborhood garden which brought people together. In our new house, there is no community gathering space and we leave in a culdesac at the end of a road. The result is we don’t get to know our neighbors.
I'm a fairly introverted, reclusive person. Much like your one neighbour. I keep to myself.
I do know my neighbours. The couple on one side is delightful and the woman on the other side is a "Karen" who I prefer not associate with. She is an outdoor person and only "talks" to me when she has a problem with how I keep my yard. Ironically I would probably use my yard more (and thus tend to it more) if she were not always outside in her yard being loud.
We have alley parking and garages in the rear, and I have workshop in my garage so I met a lot of my neighbours on the other side of the alley when working on projects... they came and introduced themselves and asked me what I was working on. They are delightful, but they also interrupted me which is annoying.
My wife and I are easy to get along with and go out of our way to be friendly, but would honestly rather not know that our neighbours exist. Car doors, the sound of people talking, dogs barking, kids being loud, lack of privacy in our back yard are all things that really bother us. On the flip-side, when the tree in our front yard shed a branch so large that it was practically a small tree, the delightful couple next door helped us clean it up. I felt a sense of community that day and I started to get what others find enjoyable about it. Still, we often talk of going "going rural" and not having neighbours at all.
We are social animals. We can't do it all alone. That modern society has enabled us to be 'reclusive' is frankly a maladaptive outcome.
We had a mom who had recently moved in, screaming in hysterics on the block one day because she thought her toddler ran away when she stepped out for a moment to throw out trash. My neighbor (who also talks to everyone) and I came out, and along with the mailman and a couple of construction guys around the corner, immediately did a search on the neighborhood blocks. She eventually found him hiding in the house, and was relieved, but then just walked away without so much as a thank you to anyone. Such a strange way to live.
I’m currently in Phoenix, AZ, and given regular temperatures over 105* F, there just typically aren’t many people out and about, save for a few hours in the morning. And that’s usually before sun up.
I have noticed a general decline in my spirits not shooting the breeze with my neighbors from time to time.
6pm-6:30pm seems to be a prime time for people in general and families specifically to go for a walk. If you are outside with kids playing on the front lawn, this leads to a lot of organic conversation since no one is in a rush.
If you happen to be preparing and eating dinner inside during this time (like we used to), you can miss out on a lot of opportunities to get to know your neighbors (assuming they are friendly).
After I got into tech I lived in a couple of them for five years then just gave up and moved back to the underdeveloped part of the city I grew up in, where people are willing to acknowledge each other.
lived in a diverse, affluent, tech/corpo neighborhood, most neighbors ignored or were passive aggressive - the kind where you know you aren’t being ignored because the behavior is too egregious to not be aware of the impact. you aren’t being ignored, you aren’t worth ignoring.
lived in an older, affluent neighborhood. four neighbors that would likely be described as caucasian regardless of their names or backgrounds were nothing but kind, offering to help the first time we interacted.
lived in an older, rural, poor neighborhood. most folks would stop and talk if you were outside, see how stuff is going. place was shit. some of the folks were gold.
the issue isn’t the skin color, the wallet fullness, the religion, or the race. you can look any which way and be an asshole on the inside. you can have a lot or a lot of nothing, and be an asshole.
affluence just let’s the asshole shine through a bit more. after all, the asshole deserves a lot, and the money is proof.
larger cities develop these little bubbles of halfluence - starter mcmansions for the white collar “elite,” close to their cubicle farms or at least a fat internet pipe and a starbucks within uber. the environment is shit - these aren’t actually elites - so the individuals tend to act up in their burbclaves.
established vs gentrified might be a better distinction. established doesn’t always mean affluent, but it does have a different sort of wealth.
I've lived in a range of neighborhoods over my life, and I haven't really seen a pattern. My gut instinct is that attitude is contagious, and friendly neighborhoods have (or had) someone who spreads the love. People reflect the way they are treated.
But if you live in a place where there's nothing walkable and walking isn't even encouraged (no sidewalks, etc) then people don't really leave their back yards. Everyone is isolated. And to be sure this is what a good deal of people want. But if you want community and getting to know each other then you need to live in a place that encourages walking around.
Anyway... No this is not the norm. My neighborhood is extremely social and has constant get togethers.
I agree with the comments on 'half fluence'. I have some friends who've moved in to newer developments. Those neighborhoods are much less social. Ours is more established.
— <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04qPdGNA_KM>
We have new Gen Z neighbours for the last two years who seem to exist in their bubble, shutting out the immediate world and interacting only with their social circle. Barely an acknowledgement even if we’re out in the yard, shovelling snow or cutting grass.
I don’t expect much, but maybe small talk once every couple of months to get a sense they’re alright, and not gone off the deep end and bottling their urine in mason jars.
At some point, you start to fill in the blanks by noticing little things like what’s on TV through the window (hockey 24/7) when you drive by, who does the yard work (she does) or the decorations they put up on the outside.
I am wondering if this is some generational divide at play where some slice of the population had been conditioned that the only valid interactions are those that happen online.
It’s also possible that we seem intimidating or unsocial — but our interactions with other neighbours don’t seem to give this vibe.
Once the pandemic hit, everyone sort of disappeared, and I hadn't even talked to the neighbors on one side of the house. During that period, I got more introverted and sort of started avoiding social interactions with people, and not because of a fear of catching COVID. I just became more withdrawn since I wasn't socializing in general.
Anyway, after it got safer and more people were getting out, I now felt awkward seeing the people who introduced themselves on that first day since so much time has elapsed without conversation. (That's on me and my social anxiety, though.) I think it'll require me getting over my introversion to chat with them now.
On the other hand, I have been over to a neighbor on one side of my house a couple of times, but that was them going out of their way to include me.
I think what I'm saying is the pandemic created this weird empty period where people who had just moved in to neighborhoods didn't necessarily build connections with their neighbors and now it'll take some effort to bridge those gaps. On top of that, I think there was some social practice that many of us were out of, which made it even more difficult to just chat up strangers, but I feel like for me this is finally starting to go away.
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Some people like people ..
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Over the summer, however, I spend time in Spain. A town with a population under 200k, and yet far more dense than San Francisco. Streets are narrower, and most errands are less than 10 minutes away, on foot. The pharmacist, the baker, the workers at the restaurant, don't change very much. Since everyone walks, you really get to pass by every neighbor in the building every couple of weeks. The parks and playing ares with children are never close to empty, and people tend to have routines, so it's far easier to get to know people from random interactions. It's not uncommon to meet people you know, completely by accident, just because you walk the same streets. I might not stop at a certain coffee shop, but it has seating outside, and friends are be sitting there, and therefore I get a chance social encounter, even when I am not visiting the same business. There's benches in random streets, and people meet there, and chat on the street, so you don't even need a business as a "third place", when you have the street. Thus, getting six non-work social interactions a day becomes trivial.
Large parts of America have chosen forms of development that are naturally isolating: It's no surprise so many feel isolated!
> Large parts of America have chosen forms of development that are naturally isolating: It's no surprise so many feel isolated!
Indeed - I have relatives that live in a place like this. Nice homes, etc but few trees, no sidewalks, and nowhere to walk. Why would you other than exercise? And a lot of people like it this way and that's fine. They want privacy and aren't interested in building relationships with people they live near. That's fine.
But if you want a sense of community then you need to live in a place that encourages walking by making it useful.
Now I live in the city and with so many more people around I see people I know so much more often. It really makes you understand how isolating the suburbs can become.
So this wasn't a study. As far as I can tell, the results can just as easily be summarized as "people who report higher well-being are more likely to greet neighbours."
This is probably just the article to blame, the quotes they pick use words like "correlation."
I find the five vs. six distinction rather interesting though. What's up with that?
> Averaged across five dimensions that included career, communal, physical, financial, and social well-being, the increase which greeting a neighbor had led to around a 2-point increase on a scale of 0-100 up until the sixth neighbor, at which point further greetings had no measured impact.
There's no reasonable mechanism in which greeting people causes well-being. So asking why it caps out at 6 makes no sense, unless you implicitly want to call out their bullshit. It's just another vague correlation in a overinterpreted study of noisy data.
Socializing increases well-being, and greeting someone is socializing.
The value of the average is the result of the biases in data collection.
There is obviously a cap in the number of people you can practically greet in a day.
Well, I've lived in the neighborhood for ten years and only when I started walking the dog did I start meeting a bunch of people in the neighborhood. I still would like an extra 30 minutes of free time a day, but my life is a lot richer socially.
“Yeah, Fido’s house got tore up pretty bad”. Didn’t know the owner’s name :)
It's one of the reasons smoking is hard to quit for some, especially in highly populated areas.
I used to smoke.
It was the easiest way to merge into a group of people. Walk up, ask for a lighter. You are now part of the circle.
Digital online life has been a major opportunity to partially remedy the isolation induced by designs that maximize anything else (real estate value, GDP) than emotional balance.
Somewhat predictably though, the same driving forces created the same alienating mess. People are starved for social interaction and adopted digital tools en-masse, only to be exploited and reduced to data minable products.
There does not seem to be an exit from the trap we are in the short run. Material well-being has been prioritized above everything else and that is not compatible with social well-being.
We are left we somewhat sad "tips and tricks", like greeting six neighbors. Which obviously wont hurt but are so helplessly far from achieving something tangible.